To win href="/mailto:stephanie@nextwave.org.au">EMAIL US before 5pm today!

IMAGE: Zoë Coombs Marr, And that was the Summer that Changed My Life, 2010. Image by James Brown.

Thursday May 27

NEW TICKETS to Thousands

Next Wave has just releases NEW TICKETS to Sydney dancer Matthew Day’s debut solo work Thousands for tonight and tomorrow nights’ shows.Thousands is a beautiful work on now for a painfully short run at the Northcote Town Hall._

Tuesday May 25

Great Heights 2 – Tonight!

Opening tonight on the top of Melbourne Central is the second in our two-part project of dynamic public art on a rooftop Great Heights.

Great Heights 1, which featured a mud bath (hello!), has been packed away and in its place we have Great Heights 2 – Floating above shadows, moored beneath clouds a pop-up garden of sculpture, light and performance. Kay Abude, Sam George, Michael Georgetti, Tegan Lewis, Andrew Liversidge, Amy & Claire Spiers and Paul Wotherspoon have all made new work for it.

It opens tonight, Wednesday 26 May, at 6pm and runs until 10. It will then reopen tomorrow, Thursday 27 May, and Friday 28 May, also from 6 to 10pm.

To get in, and up, head to the Little Lonsdale Street entrance of Melbourne Central, and you will be escorted up. (CHeck out this map.)

Tuesday May 25

Getting Greener Competition

This year, we have tried to make the 2010 Next Wave greener than ever. While we are far from being carbon neutral, we have made a conscious effort to reduce paper waste and printed matter (we printed less programs and have beefed up our online presence). And we have been working with Laura Morgan, an Honours student at RMIT, to make the 2010 Next Wave Festival more environmentally friendly.

As part of our ‘getting greener’ program, Laura has come up with the following quiz to get us thinking about our environmental impact as we move about the Festival.

And, Next Wave is offering a prize of a nifty FREE CRUMPLER BAG (animated above) to FIRST THREE LUCKY people who correctly answer the following five questions:

1. Smokers!: What is the best thing you can do with your butt?

a) Bin it

b) Plant it

c) Spank it

2. Coffee drinkers!: How should you drink your coffee?

a) Sitting in the Next Wave Festival Club, making those cool kids at 1000 Pound Bend wash your dishes?

b) From a disposable cup made from virgin old growth forests and baby seals

c) From a reuseable coffee cup

3. Travelers!: How should you get to Next Wave events?

a) Drive in and spend all your beer money on parking and fuel

b) Get physical like Olivia NJ and cycle

c) Chill on public transport

4. Cab catchers!: Why should you catch a cab home with someone else?

a) Splitting a cab means more money for dumplings

b) You can invite your cab-mate in for “coffee”

c) Reduce your ecological footprint

d) All of the above

5. Everyone!: After you’ve gone through the NWF printed program, what should you do with it?

a) Put it in the garbage, contribute to landfill, and miss out on the opportunity to show your kids that you were cool once

b) Use it to cover the self help book that you’re reading on the tram

c) Pass it on to a friend who wasn’t quick enough to snap one up

Email your answers to href="/mailto:nextwave@nextwave.org.au">nextwave@nextwave.org.au by 5pm this Friday 28 May. Winners will will be randomly selected using an extremely complicated mathematical algorithm.

Monday May 24

Folding Wife GIVEAWAY!

Alone, equipped only with anecdotes, Grace breathes life into the two women of her family who have led her to the Australian landscape.

Presented by Urban Theatre Projects and Anino Shadowplay Collective,The Folding Wife is contemporary Australian theatre at its best. Three generations of women shared the goal to leave the poverty and uncertainty of their homeland for the promises of the First World. The Folding Wife contrasts the iconic imagery of a fierce, impenetrable Australian landscape with that of resilient Filipina immigrants.

This is powerful theatre, devised by writer Paschal Daantos Berry and directed by Deborah Pollard on for only four days at Arts House, opening this Wednesday.

Next Wave has FIVE DOUBLE PASSES to give away to the THURSDAY 7pm show. To win, email href="/mailto:tom@nextwave.org.au">tom@nextwave.org.au with the subject line ‘Folding Wife.’

Monday May 24

The FINAL WEEK!

Some of you might remember the 2008 Next Wave Festival, and how it flew by faster than a Justin Bieber promo tour. Now, as we face the end of this Festival, and stare with uncomfortable wonder at another two years before the next NWF, a mad scramble has begun to see as much as we can. Almost all ticketed shows have sold out, there’s queues for (Nelson) beers at the Festival Club, and it’s hard to see the doggies through the hordes outside Melbourne Museum.

Do not waste this week! Start at the NGV tonight and hear Deborah Kelly talk, and get along to the last Comfort Zones at Witches in Britches on Tuesday, and block out next Saturday for the MONUMENTALSports Club 2 at the MCG. Oh, and there’s Great Heights 2, on the top of Melbourne Central, no less, opening this Wednesday.

GO NUTS!

Next Wave

(Read the latest Next Wave Festival Pegboard here. And, if you haven’t signed up to the Pegboard already, now is your chance: we are giving away a PRIZE to one lucky new subscriber, courtesy of Third Drawer Down.)

Friday May 21

We love this photo!

Friday May 21

Weekend What’s Ons

Image of the ‘A Good Death’ opening by Tristan Davies.

Has there ever been a better weekend than this to see 2010 NWF projects? Here, we give you our MUST SEE 2010 NWF shows and projects, before they evaporate into the ether forever. It’s not everything you can see (check out our calendar for the full daily lists), but some of the ones that still have tickets available or are free and big enough to take in everyone.

EVERY NIGHT

You don’t need us to tell you the 2010 NWF Club has been rocking out this last week, and this weekend is guaranteed to take it to the next level, whatever the hell that might be! Tonight, we’ve got Y3K DJ-ing at 10pm, and Metse Hagos on at 11.On Saturday night, local art legends SPILL COLLECTIVE have planned a monumental night of DJing and VJing. On Sunday Paula van Beek ‘plays only songs with the word danger in it,’ and at 10pm Next Waver Tom Doig gives us ‘80s trash mixed with hip-hop trash.’

Image of the Festival Club by Shivanjani Lal.

TODAY & TONIGHT

The final Wall Work work is happening night now until about 3pm this afternoon outside the State Library of Victoria, and HIGH VIS DANDY will finish their wonderful haute couture work-ware with a final performance at 4:30pm.

Yake Weiss’ beguiling The Infinity Tube launches tonight at 6pm in Meyers Place, and tickets are still available for YOUTH VS PHYSICS’ performances before it wraps up its woefully too short season at Docklands this Sunday; good seats still available for the next three nights.

(GIVEAWAY! Next Wave has three double passes to giveaway to YOUTH VS PHYSICS’ 7pm Saturday show. Email href="/mailto:tom@nextwave.org.au">tom@nextwave.org.au NOW to win. First in, best whatever …)

Tonight at Fed Square catch the second last all-night screening of The Ultimate Time Lapse Mega Mix from 8pm to 8am the next day. (Final marathon runs Saturday night to Sunday morning.)

SATURDAY

The predicted feel-good HIT of the Festival is FUN RUN, a one-off performance spectacular, tomorrow at 1:40pm in City Square, and it’s no surprise that Dachshund U.N. is on everyone’s list. It’s on tomorrow, for the second last time, at Melbourne Museum, 2pm.

The Sisters Hayes will give us a final night closing performance of A Good Death at St Mary Star of the Sea Church in West Melbourne this Sunday at 5pm.

Image of West Space’s work in Structural Integrity, on now at Arts House, Meat Market until the end of the Festival.

Thursday May 20

FREE DOUBLE PASS TO JOY!

Next Wave has ONE DOUBLE PASS to give away for JOY for tonight (Thursday 20 May) performance at 7pm.

Inspired by the inexorable process of ageing, JOY is a curious collision of fact and fiction; a dance work that traverses the difficult terrain of knowing ‘old’ when one is still ‘young’. Created by the winners of the 2008 Best Dance Performance Award at the Melbourne Fringe Festival, JOY is a dance work that exists both as an imagined world and as a place firmly rooted in the here and now. A journey through the playful, poignant and absurd… is JOY.

By Fiona Bryant and Kate Stanley

Thursday 20 May at 7pm

Guildford Lane Gallery, 20 – 24 Guildford Lane, Melbourne

TO WIN, email href="/mailto:natalie@nextwave.org.au">natalie@nextwave.org.au by 5pm Thursday 20 May. First in, best dressed!

Photo by Kristyna Hessova, 2009.

Thursday May 20

HIGH VIS DANDY Video

Yesterday, Next Wave had the privilege of witnessing an early morning performance of the 2010 NWF project HIGH VIS DANDY at the top end of Collins Street.

Here, we present some selected scenes of what we saw:

Video by Next Wave.

Wednesday May 19

GIVEAWAY – Who Knows What

Next Wave has FOUR DOUBLE PASSES to giveaway for Who Knows What, for tomorrow night’s (Thursday 20 May) performance at 8pm.

Who Knows What is an experimental dance event created by choreographer Rob McCredie in collaboration with four of Melbourne’s brightest young dancers.

Here’s what we know:There’s us, there’s you, there’s a room. There’s some people we know and some we don’t. We meet on a specific date at a specific time and location. We don’t know yet what will happen or what you will think. What matters is that for that time, in that place, we are in it together.

TO WIN, email href="/mailto:natalie@nextwave.org.au">natalie@nextwave.org.au by 10am Thursday 20 May. Best in, best dressed.

Image by Heiko Waechter.

Tuesday May 18

RAD video from Sports Club 1

Get Set is a kinetic sound sculpture where field recordings taken from athletics training on the George Knott Resere in Clifton Hill were made into an electro-acoustic composition and then reconfigured by spinning the audio through a lo-fi kinetic sculpture.

Wall Work – on now

This footage was taken down at Birrarung Marr, Behind Federation Square. Tomorrow the wall will be built at ACCA, Thursday at Fed Square and Friday at the State Libray of Victoria. Details, schedule, addresses and maps HERE.

Video by Next Wave.

Photos by Paul Davis.

Monday May 17

Selected Scenes from Sports Club 1

Sunday May 16

Our NEW Festival Photo Blog

Next Wave intern Shivanjani Lal has put together this BLOG that collects images from our Festival photographers every day over the Festival. It’s a great feed of the dramatic and stunning work our 2010 Next Wave Festival photographers are capturing right now.

Friday May 14

In Your Face!

Next Wave pestered everyone with buzzing video and stills camera people last night at the 2010 Next Wave Festival Opening. It was a great night: lots of good vibes in the room, and plenty of amazing new art work to discover, investigate and enjoy.

Wednesday May 12

It All Starts Now

The 12th Next Wave Festival starts today. Over the next seventeen days expect to see some amazing art. Dachshunds in a mock-United Nations, art in the hot tubs in the MCG’s change rooms, martyred saints in the crypt, bespoke high-vis work wear at the top end of Collins Street, remote control mince at the Meat Market, and 50 other dance, theatre, visual art, sculpture, multi-art, screen art, new media projects all over Melbourne.

It’s Artistic Director Jeff Khan’s second Next Wave Festival and bigger, more audacious and risky than before..

And tonight, it all starts at the 2010 Next Wave Festival Club at 1000 £ Bend, 361 Little Lonsdale Street, at 9pm. Festival designers People Collective have decked it out to epic proportions, and producer Martyn Coutts has programmed a great nightly set of DJs, VJs and performances.

Do NOT miss this Festival – it’s a big one.

(And here is a sneak peek of one our 2010 Next Wave Festival Keynote Projects, Structural Integrity, filmed and edited by Festival videographer Hoang Tran Nguyen, which opens to the public tomorrow at Arts House, Meat Market, running until the end of May.)

Tuesday May 11

The Daily Wave

Local legends threethousand.com.au are running fresh articles, announcements and giveaways every day on their website about all the off-beat, random and pop-up aspects of the 2010 NWF, in a series called The Daily Wave.

Monday May 10

Club Programme Announced

Starting this Thursday at 9pm, the 2010 Next Wave Festival Club will be the pumping heart of central city Melbourne.

Housed inside the Meat Packing District-esque confines of Melbourne’s own 1000 £ Bend, 361 Little Lonsdale Street (map), our Festival Club has been transformed within an inch of its life into the city’s most resplendent and social art venue.

Festival designers People Collective did the fit out, and Martyn Coutts curated a RAD program of artworks, performances and happenings, across (almost) every night of the Festival. AND, you can drink, eat, suck dry the good old fashioned free Wi-Fi. Be at the Club before a Festival show, AND get there after 9pm for our nightly After-Shows series, programmed with DJs and performances by Festival artists, staff and friends.

BIG thanks goes out to Nelson Beer, official beer of the 2010 Nexrt Wave Festival, for making our Club a reality.

So, if you are lucky enough to find yourslef in the audience of Private Dances, take a closer look at that enviro-friendly napkin near your plate before you delicately wipe the corners of your mouth. It could be one of these:

Monday May 3

Pre-Festival Openings this Friday

That’s right – THIS FRIDAY, six days before the 2010 Next Wave Festival officially opens, Next Wave gives you a trio of openings at Kings ARI.

Come along and check out new work by some of Australia’s most intriguing video and visual artists. See Soda_Jerk’s new work After the Rainbow, DongWoo Kang’s Candlelight Protestival, a new work exploring media censorship in South Korea, and Film that will end in Death, a multi-channel video work by Trevor Flinn that explores risk in everyday life.

Jeff Khan Speaks, in RealTime

In it Jeff spoke about the ideas of risk and how the Festival theme, No Risk Too Great, underpins the Festival projects.

“Every act of creation is a risk—starting with nothing and taking a position. A risk averse culture is contrary to the artistic process putting at risk, in turn, the scale and ambition of artists’ projects.”

Tuesday April 27

Our NEW Festival Dance Program

The site features, all in one place, detail and images about the eight 2010 Next Wave Festival dance projects: Private Dances; The Oak’s Bride; JOY; Who Knows What; And Then Something Fell on my Head; Thousands; Bromance; and The Lost Living.

The 2010 Next Wave Festival Dance Program brings together some of Australia’s best emerging dance makers in the creation and presentation of ambitious new works, in theatre and gallery spaces as well as basements, town halls, industrial sites and beyond.

Through Next Wave’s formal and informal development programs, we have encouraged these artists to push the boundaries of the art form and create bold new works which consolidate, expand and explode the parameters of their practices.

Wednesday April 21

Get with The Program, already!

The Program is a national ‘what’s on’ guide, giving you the latest info on events, festivals, gigs, performances, theatre shows, exhibitions in your local area. It’s an initiative of the Australia Council, a major Next Wave supporter.

Right now The Program and Next Wave are offering YOU a chance to respond to the 2010 Next Wave Festival theme, No Risk Too Great, in a new online group HERE.

As the site builds it will be a great place to discuss the theme with fellow Festival visitors and Next Wave staff.

Get on it!

Next Wave

Monday April 19

Behind the Scenes of Dachshund U.N.

Featuring a cast of dachshund dogs, Bennett’s Dachshund U.N. is both a large scale architectural installation and a performance work that examines the role of the United Nations as a risk management organisation.

A scale replica of a former U.N. office in Geneva, Switzerland, will be constructed by Miller in the Melbourne Museum plaza, where it will remain for the duration of the 2010 Next Wave Festival. Each Saturday afternoon, this structure will play host to a meeting of the U.N.’s Commission on Human Rights, wherein all 47 of the national delegates are live dachshunds, or ‘sausage dogs’.

Monday April 19

The Sisters Hayes’ Studio

Next Wave visited The Sisters Hayes in their studio this week to catch up about their Festival project A Good Death
.

The Sisters, a trio of sibling artists, have faithfully resurrected grisly stories of Martyrdom for their Festival project, including Saint Joan of Arc’s burning at the stake, Saint Sebastian’s death by arrows (and then by clubs) and the beautiful Saint Barbara’s beheading. All this recreated in a dark and captivating series of performances, paintings, videos and installation, exhibited in the Church Crypt of St Mary Star of The Sea, West Melbourne.

During the dark of night, Festival audiences will be guided through the magnificently restored West Melbourne Catholic Church before descending into The Sisters Hayes’ exquisite and glittering exhibition.

IMAGE: ‘Bit of a stretch … Ziggy is one of 47 delegates to the Dachshund UN’. Photo: Justin McManus/The Age

Tuesday April 13

Launched

Today, we, the people of Next Wave, launched our 12th Next Wave Festival in our 25-year history. No Risk Too Great! The Arts Minister and the Lord Mayor both attended the event, a discreet affair for media and sponsors, at new art space called Slot 9, beneath Federation Square.

IMAGES by Next Wave. Top image features performers from HIGH VIS DANDY, a 2010 Next Wave Festival project.

Monday April 12

Welcome!

It’s exactly one month until our Festival starts: 13 May 2010, so you have plenty of time to browse the program, discover new art-forms, book tickets, read stuff, enter competitions, check out our map, learn about our artists – EVERYTHING!

(But, please bear with us as we iron out this site’s wrinkles; if something’s not working as you think it should, send us an href="/mailto:nextwave.org.au">email.)

Ultimately, we hope you are excited about the new work we have planned, and we look forward to seeing you in May.